Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
Scars and Their Stories: Exploring a Scene from Jaws
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
Tagged: movie
Franchises & Series · Military and Paramilitary · Thrillers & Action · War
Top Gun: Maverick – A Navy Pilot’s Take on the Great American Advert
Top Gun might leave viewers with the negative impression that all naval aviators are infantilized, high-functioning, pride-stricken narcissists, and I’m going to let you in on a secret. We are. But most[…]
Wild Imagination: Forty Years of The Thing
“You just can’t beat wild imagination.” – Bob Bottin * * * It took decades for John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) to find an audience, on home video and cable.[…]
Dance · French Cinema · Interviews · Music & Musicals
GROVER DALE! An Interview with the Dance Legend
Dancing in the streets of Rochefort was the best performing experience I’ve ever known. Reacting to real sunshine, breezes, cafés, and streets was miraculous. My emotions suddenly became as accessible[…]
Animation · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Batman, Anime, and How to Make Great Pop Art
Blockbuster films don’t have to be watered-down hero fare to succeed at the box office. The compelling design and archetypal simplicity of our comic-book heroes are gold mines for stories[…]
Drama · Mystery · Philosophy · Thrillers & Action
Are You Still Watching? Demonlover (2002) and the Spectre of Voyeurism
This is the central thesis Assayas raises here – instant gratification via the image suggests a greater degree of control over what we consume (including its ethics) when in fact[…]
Celebrity Culture · Crime · Digital · Drama · Societal Trends
Bling around the Collar: How Can We Get Rid of This Dirty Ring?
The Bling Ring’s impossible challenge for us is to reject the moralizing. We feel superior to the teenagers because of the celebrity issue. The four girls and boy represent our[…]
Absurdism · African American · Horror · Surrealism · Westerns
What’s Behind That Curtain: The Wizard of Oz and Jordan Peele’s Nope
The theme of exploitation is evident in Nope’s multiple references to a classic film. Not Jaws, The Goonies, or Close Encounters, or any of the Western films nodded at in[…]
Endless Night: Luchino Visconti’s Le notti bianche
The city of Visconti’s film is a palimpsest in which postwar modernity (nightclubs, movie theatres, beatniks, and loose women) is superimposed on the ruins of the city’s gothic past. Rather[…]
Franchises & Series · Horror · Men & Masculinity
Saw and the Danger of Not Talking about Masculinity
We see how Jigsaw can fail, again and again, to help anyone and still blame it on them. We see how people can live through how little his traps teach[…]
Comedy · Historical & Epic · Native Americans · Revisionism · Westerns
Robert Altman’s Wild West Show: On Buffalo Bill and the Indians
Buffalo Bill and the Indians joins a select group of films whose popular failure nonetheless represented an aesthetic success: Patty Hearst (1987) and The King of Comedy (1983), come to[…]
Directors · Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
He’s Thinking of Ending Things: Charlie Kaufman’s Breakup Letter to an Entire Age
Where Reid spends pages and pages absentmindedly ruminating on the many very painful, and very human, distinctions between Self and Other before losing himself in a tonal mess of relationship[…]
In Full Bloom: Days of Daisy (2022)
Plot lines about women wanting babies are as old as time, and can easily degenerate into sexist tropes. Daisy’s desire to have a kid doesn’t define her. Instead, over the[…]
Drama · Religion & Spirituality · Writers & Critics
Two Perspectives on Sainthood in 1951: Roberto Rossellini’s Europe ’51 and Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair
Graham Greene could be a very political writer (nowhere more than in The Quiet American, which was his next major work after The End of the Affair), but Christianity has[…]
Celebrity Culture · Counterculture · Music & Musicals · Production History · Societal Trends · Youth
How the Monkees Birthed New Hollywood
A rewatch benumbed to this flash and flare reveals the stark morbidity of Head. Throughout the movie the Monkees are assaulted, hunted, and caged. Words fail, fists fail. The film[…]
Directors · Gender · Hollywood · Horror · Men & Masculinity
The Jaws of War: How Quint Decodes Masculinity in the Films of Spielberg
If the sum of Spielberg’s work is about how men live in the world, Jaws is his most particular point on the subject, a film centered with almost fantastical totality[…]
Franchises & Series · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends
The Batman, the Grand Appeaser: Repressive Desublimation, Foucault, and False Hope
The Batman (2022) fulfills complex, necessary roles in society. The intricate power relations of the film, as a part of mass media, are directly related to those in the spectacle[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · Muslims
Dispatch from Tribeca #2 (2022): Stranger at the Gate and An Act of Worship
Stranger at the Gate is sharp, and benefits from a tense and credible narrative. It’s constructed like a bomb – a heavy orb with a lit fuse, carefully and reassuringly[…]
Myth and Archetype · SF & Fantasy
Touched by an Angel (of Death): Douglas Trumbull’s Brainstorm and the Visionary Ideal
“Look at the stars,” the genius of Trumbull’s movie finally seems to be saying, but also know the stars within. * * * Often, it’s the throwaway scenes that click.[…]
Activist & Political · Comedy · Counterculture · Experimental & Underground
Laughing at Ourselves: On William Klein’s Mr. Freedom (1969)
This is an excerpt from the introduction to the author’s new book on Mr. Freedom (https://liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/books/isbn/9781800856943/). * * * The film calls into question both the American international and domestic[…]
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